Apple says unlocking software can damage iPhone

Apple Inc said on Monday that programs available on the Internet that allow the iPhone to be used with other service providers besides AT&T's Cingular network can irreparably damage the device.

Apple, which also makes the Mac computer, the iPod digital music player and runs the iTunes online store, said once an Apple-supplied software update is installed on the iPhone, it "will likely result in the modified iPhone becoming permanently inoperable."

Since the iPhone's introduction at the end of June, Apple has said it expects to sell 1 million units by the end of this month. In the first two days it was on sale, Apple said it sold 270,000 of the gadgets.

"We are not doing anything proactively to disable iPhones that have been hacked or unlocked," Phil Schiller, Apple's head of worldwide product marking told Reuters.

There is one bit of good news in all this: Apple revealed as part of this threat that the iPhone version of the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store would go live this week.